The viciously rigged so-called CIA torture report that a vindictive group of Democrats lovingly constructed has been so effectively savaged for its outrageous bigotry, blatant dishonesty and calculated distortions that I didn’t think I could add anything worthwhile to the what the critics were saying, until a reader emailed me a link to Business Insider that had published a report called The CIA’s Post-Torture Problems Have Just Begun. Oddly enough this so-called reporter omitted any reference to the Democrats’ own torture problem: the fact that leading Democrats had been fully informed on the subject and that the Jay Rockefeller went so far as to urge the CIA to be even tougher on terrorists. Yep, it was all the fault of those nasty conservatives.

A Muslim fanatic walked into Sydney café, pulled out a gun and took the customers and staff hostage. Two of the hostages were killed, one while heroically tackling the terrorist, and several wounded. The reaction of the terrorist-sympathising left was to go into protection mode for Muslims. The insufferable Age was able to produce a so-called report on the terrorist without mentioning the relevant fact that he is a Muslim. It did, however, call him a “self-described cleric”.

Now an Age reader would have to determine whether this cleric was a catholic, a Presbyterian, a Buddhist, a Sikh priest or maybe even one of those dastardly fanatical Quakers. Not only that, they would also assume that he was not a real cleric. What the Age did not report is that Manny Conditsis, who was the terrorist’s lawyer, definitely stated that his client “was a cleric in Iran… and that’s been established”. Terrific. A fanatical Iranian cleric was allowed into the country and now two Australians are dead. Only political correctness can explain this insanity. Continue reading Muslim terrorism, the left and the Sydney killings: What is to be done?→

My Keynesian critic asserts that the “cut in nominal wages which was one of the reasons we got deflation…” This is nonsense. The deflation was triggered when the London funds started restricting credit in order to build up their reserves. The result was a massive contraction from March 1929 to September 1931 that saw M1 drop by 27.2 per cent and demand deposits by a whopping 33 per cent. This should not even have to be said but the cuts in nominal wages were in response to the deflation and in no way contributed to it. Moreover, it is ludicrous to even suggest that a fall in nominal wages could under any circumstances be deflationary. A deflation is a strictly monetary phenomenon1.

He is right, however, in stating that the appalling increase in the unemployment rate was largely due to the increase in real wages. However, his assertion that as other countries got inflation immediately after they devalued then the devaluation of the Australian pound in January 1931 must also have been followed by inflation is flat out wrong2. A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words. Although Australia devalued in January 1931 chart 1 shows that retail prices continued their fall from 1929 and did not start rising again until 1934, three years from the devaluation. Continue reading Australia and the Great Depression: recovery was not driven by real wage cuts, devaluation or consumption→